The first time I took my Thai girlfriend – who is now my Thai wife – to the mainland from Hawaii, I introduced her to chicken fried steak in Texas. She loved it. That’s something I really do miss.
God, I know what you mean. 
One thing you might check out — around here, there’s a couple of churches that actually make and sell potluck items as lunch or dinner plates. I was thinking you might check with the ones near you. It’s a treat that I don’t avail myself of often enough.
A typical and regional midwest delicacy is the Church Chicken Barbecue (Or the VFW Hall, or various social org fundraisers.) Where I had it first, they have 2 I/2 foot above ground masonry grill pits with welded grill racks for the BBQ. I/2 chickens are slow BBQ’ed over briquets. Usually a worcestershire, vinegar, and hot sauce mop for at least 6 hours. Sold in half chicken dinners with potato salad, baked beans, and a roll an butter.
No betta chicken…better than fried.
For what it’s worth, I’m French, and one of my dreams is to have the chance one day to eat a real home-made Thanksgiving turkey dinner. I’m just enamoured with the concept. Turkey. Cranberries. Corn bread. Succotash, yams, mashed potatoes, the whole shot. Exotic words to me. I keep seeing thanksgiving dinners in films, read about them in books, and it has become a sort of unattainable fantasy to me. So yes, there is such a thing as american cuisine. On a side note, I also have a book, translated in French, on southern cooking, written by a black southern woman. I’ve tried a few of its recipes. Very interesting, southern cooking.
I have never even seen succotash, and would very much like to eat Chicken cordon bleau cooked by someone who knows what they are doing. 
However one spells it.
lol - That would be chicken “cordon bleu” - still, never heard of it. Had to google it. Seems like an american recipe to me (a few quebec-based websites mention it). If you wanna go for hardcore French stuff you should rather opt for Boeuf Bourguignon or stuff like that (about a billion calories per serving). Ah well, the grass is always greener…
OK, I just went into full-on Homer Simpson drool mode after reading that. And now I’m seriously craving my mom’s meat loaf (like any good Midwestern native, I think my mom makes the best meat loaf in the world, and, no, your mom’s is not better) and the skillet-fried potatoes she would make on my birthday every year.
Inthelake, I really hope you get to have a full-on Thanksgiving dinner sometime. I would recommend you do it in either the South or the Midwest, which is where you’d get closest to the popular depiction, though in the South you’re more likely to get yams, while in the Midwest green bean casserole is king. But the rest is all pretty much the same. And, goddamn, is it good.
This thread is also making me crave an authentic Kentucky hot brown, which might be one of the single-best things I’ve ever eaten. Though I say that without having sampled chili in Texas or BBQ in Kansas City.
Then I’ve probably got everything right except the spelling.
Thanks!
That’s where you lost me. Miracle Whip, it’s a miracle I don’t “whip my cookies” just thinking about it. Yuck. It’s just mayonaisse with sugar. gilding the lily. And not more than an hour ago I had a BLT for lunch! So there! So I agree with you, but I’ll need mayo on mine, please.
My contribution to the thread:
A worl class dessert,
Pumpkin Pie, with fresh, whipped cream.
uniquly American and there is no finer dessert in all the world.
Succotash, as I’ve had it, is kinda like a thicker, tangy, corn chowder. Its absolutely spectacular to eat with some corn bread to dip in it.
It’s really a shame that Yankee BBQ gets such short shrift. People always talk about Southern BBQ, but the ubiquitous Fire Department Chicken Barbecues of the midwest are rarely ever mentioned, it’s like our happy little sercret. Every summer thousands of Fire Departments, Churches, and VFW Halls in the Midwest and Northeast make some of the finest Chicken Barbecue in the world. A lot of churches and fire halls around here have permanent BBQ pits out back for these annual fundraising events. Chicken halves by the ton are slow barbecued over open coal pits and the chickens are fastidiously flipped and basted with a vinegar based mop for a few hours and come out perfectly juicy, tender, and flavorful… The skin is caramel charred and crispy (perhaps the best part.) No tomato based BBQ sauce here, just vinegar, butter or oil, maybe some worcestershire or hot sauce, and some seasonings whipped up in in huge quantities to marinate and mop.
Every fire department and church has their own secret recipe I’m sure. But the internet is surprisingly lacking in recipes for these Barbecue Chicken Dinner sauces/mops. Maybe the Yankees are even more secretive of their BBQ sauces than the Southerners. Here’s are a couple of different versions that I found that seem about right.
Eastern Shore BBQ Chicken
Cornell Firehouse Marinade and Basting Sauce
Meh, I like Miracle whip sometimes… I’m not shamed to admit it, household staple for as long as I can remember.
And btw… My Mom’s meatloaf is better. 
The thing is, there’s about as many ways to cook the turkey as there are ways to serve it. I’ve had deep fried turkey (no, it sounds worse than it is, but talk about a juicy bird, not greasy at all) and I swear by my secret boyfriend Alton Brown’s recipe for brining and roasting a turkey.
If you have a big enough crowd, you’ll also need a spiral-sliced Virginia ham to go with the turkey, and green bean casserole.
One of my favorite things was coming home from work, getting out of the car, tramping over to my garden in my professional attire, picking a few green tomatoes, and slicing them up to fry them with dinner. slurp.
And pecan pie! With vanilla ice cream!
God, I just had dinner and now I’m salivating.
…pecan pie, peach cobbler, fried corn, jalapeno cornbread, fried okra, acorn squash, vidalia onion…and how 'bout a little chow-chow with those pintos?
Has no one mentioned Brunswick Stew? As American as it gets.
Or how about a good old Lowcountry boil?
Or a kettle of fried catfish with some nice juicy hushpuppies?
I’ve never understood hushpuppies. I’ve only known them as shoes, but I’ve heard them referred to as food.
Hushpuppies are little balls of fried cornbread. Think falafel, but made with cornmeal instead of garbanzos.
That must feel weird on your feet.
In my experience, it’s corn kernels with lima beans and maybe sweet red or green bell peppers. At least that’s what it was in the Midwest when I was growing up. I loathed it.
I thought so, too, until I had Midwestern food as it’s made by the Amish and Mennonite communities. That’s delicious!
And I second the contention that midwestern BBQ gets unjustly ignored.
Besides, fresh Indiana corn, lightly grilled or barely parboiled, with butter and salt, is also Midwestern cuisine. You can’t tell me that stuff is bad.
Succotash in these parts is just a buttery mix of lima beans and corn mixed together, maybe some pimento added in fancier versions. It’s never really been my favorite, the green flavor of the lima beans just doesn’t pair up well with the sweet corn to my palette. I hate American Pimento that comes in jars, too… such a weird flavor… fresh roasted red peppers like the Italians do, is an entirely different creature. Of course, there are many different American versions of succotash with the addition of cream and various different bean and corn pairings.